Mainstream Portrayal of Parental Alienation and the Turning of the Tide

The Split, currently showing on BBC One, is a largely frothy drama which has a needle sharp thread of reality running all the way through it. Last night, as the three sisters at the heart of the drama, discovered that their mother had intercepted thirty years worth of letters and presents from their father after their divorce, we were able to watch what I have been witness to many times over in the past decades or more of my working life. The dawning, sickening, realisation that the life that has been lived has been constructed by a parent hell bent on revenge and control. The grief of knowing that the love that was been portrayed as deficient and/or absent, had been there all of the time. The pain was well portrayed by lead sister Nicola Walker (pictured). What comes next, if it is as true to life as last night’s final scene reveal was, will be the roller coaster of confusion, anger, hatred and bewilderment that children feel when they are reunited in such circumstances with a parent they have been coerced to reject.